Masahiro Sakurai's Arm Injury Impacts His Work On Smash Bros.

Kirby and Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has revealed in the latest issue of Famitsu magazine that he's picked up a painful injury which is hindering his work — although it's worth pointing out that he stopped short of saying his situation will result in any kind of delay for the latest Smash Bros. instalment, which is coming to the Wii U and 3DS.

I think the one word I've said the most this year, by far, is 'Ow!' Not only am I getting calcific tendonitis, but they've also found what are apparently several ruptures in the muscles. My upper arm hurts, and there's this chronic dull pain in my elbow joint as well. On the lower arm, there's this feeling of fatigue around the flexor muscles that turns into pain when I use a keyboard or game controller with my fingers.

There's no instant cure for it, so all I can do is either block the pain with injections or put my arm in a cast to keep the ruptures from spreading. I was told that the important thing was to keep my arm as rested as possible. In order to get it fully healed, the only thing is to not use my right arm or hand. So not only am I using a trackball with my left hand; now I'm using it to eat, brush my teeth, wash my hair, and even drive as much as I'm able to.

As a director, I don't have much time in the weekdays to proceed along with my own work. The entire day is spent overseeing other people, holding meetings, working on other proposals, making visits elsewhere and so on. If I can get everything squared away, then I can work on my own stuff, but most of the time there's just an overwhelming lack of time. Often I go in on my off-days to catch up on my own work, but with my body going on me like this, I have to cut these extra days out of my schedule and even with that I can't use my right arm very much to control things. If this disorder lingers, or if it never gets fixed, there's no telling what impact that would have on the project.

I've had to control two characters at once in a lot of game projects up to now, so as long as I keep it to simple moves, this works well enough. It doesn't go that easy with the Nintendo 3DS version, though, and the debug camera is pretty hard to control. Still, now I realize how important it is to have your health. I'm glad I'm still in good enough shape to work.

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Poor Sakurai.Must be a tough job, being in charge of two Smash Bros. projects at once.I hope he gets better, finishes the project and then hopefully can relax a bit more and work on something different (and awesome, his games are always awesome) with a bit less pressure.

Honestly, knowing tough work schedules and a lack of sparetime myself I just have to say: Get well soon, no matter what. I'd rather not get a new smash brothers at all than knowing this guy ruined his health over it.

I hope things get better for you, Mr. Sakurai. I think we (Nintendo fans) would all hate to see you retire as great game developers like yourself are becoming scarce. I wouldn't wish that on anyone....not event the COD developers. Rest easy for a speedy recovery. Get well soon!

I don't recall reading about any game developer having to go through this before. I hope he recovers in due speed so the games can be on track. All of that intense work wouldn't help his injury. He should really take a vacation after it's all done.

Holy smokes, this is bad news twice. Bad for him in the first place (and given Japanese people in general - don't take this as stereotypical, though - tend to have an obsessive sense of honor, that's really gotta suck for him), and of course, bad for everyone waiting for the new Smash game (then again, the first is way more important, not to mention touchy) - especially those (like me) who have been waiting for a portable Smash for ages now. Hopefully a "3D Classics: Super Smash Bros. Melee" could ease the wait, but I digress.

Nonetheless, by now the only Smash-related news I'm gonna look forward to are those related to Sakurai's health. To good ol' Masahiro: with everything you've given us Nintendo fans so far, you deserve to get better. Health comes first!

The new smash brothers is a big step up. it's so realistic now when your fighting in the game you can even break your arm in real life that's probably what happened :/ get better soon Sakurai! can't wait for smash bros...

Ouch. I do hope that he takes time off to rest and heal up before continuing on with the development. After all, one's health is far more important than anything else. Though knowing how hard these guys must be pushing themselves to meet deadlines, I doubt it. :/ I hope he recovers soon.

But seriously, I hope he recovers soon! As for the game: It's okay, we wait a little longer! Your health is more important! Besides, if you ruin your body we may never see a game again from you! And I guess everyone agrees with me that it would be terrible!

However, it truly is heartwarming to see how much we're all more worried for Sakurai than for the next SSB (although, as I said before, regarding Smash, all our worries boil down to 3DSonicPizza's simple "Sucks").

Get better, Masahiro! All us smashers will be waiting for you to recover - your good health will be the SSB news we'll look forward to the most.

The part that worries me the most is where he says that there's the scenario where this disease he has contracted, has no cure; if that is the case, maybe this will be his last amazing project. I really hope it is temporary because he is one of nintendo's pillars. Get well Sakurai-san.

I'm no stranger to hospitals and doctor visits so I know how he feels, just not to the same extent obviously. Hope he gets well soon.

@FOURSIDE_BOY He said theres no instant cure, meaning he can't just take antibiotics for a few days and be done with it. Its one of those conditions where you have to carefully nurture and hope goes away on it's own time.

Sakurai being sidelined with a right arm injury DOES SUCK indeed. I could have sworn I had read about something in another article on another site that's similar to this about a few weeks ago. All I can say is, get well soon Sakurai! Your health is more important to us all than worrying about finishing a game. Health first, game making is second.

@pntjr Drop dead. You clearly have no consideration for anyone but yourself, and all that matters to you is that you get your game on time. Also, learn to spell.
Sakurai, delay the game if you have to. Just heal that arm.

Get well Sakurai, but really, I hope you giving Namco some control of the development. They seem to have a lot better of an idea of what makes a game competitively viable and have a fun, successful online multiplayer. Namco even supports thei competitive scene for their fighters with increased prize money for tournaments. Sakurai still defends that giving Kid Icarus multiple control schemes (over the questionable default one) would be unfair (every PC game and multiple multiplayer games in general offer multiple control schemes) and he forced a bunch of intentionally anti competitive elements into Brawl (the game is too slow, and NOBODY, even casuals, think tripping is great) that caused it to become less fun a lot faster then Melee, to the point where many people still prefer Melee over Brawl competitively.